The Leadership Center at UT Dallas

The Leadership Center was established at the University of Texas at Dallas in 2004 in specific response to a pent-up need of the 21st century: to develop ethical and learning leaders in our community. We are housed in UT Dallas’s Jindal School of Management.

We believe this concept of ethical leadership plays a vital role in the leadership process that translates into better leaders in business, government, and society. We believe that if we had more ethical and learning leaders in positions of power, we would have a world with more stability, honesty, and fairness.

Dean's Message

Connect with the Director

Faculty & Fellows

Offerings

Assessments

Research

Sponsors & Partners

I am very pleased to introduce the Leadership Center here at the School of Management. The key to success of any modern organization is sustainable development through ethical leadership and innovation. We have brought together top-notch faculty and practitioners, from all over the world, with the goal of creating a deeper and more meaningful understanding of ethical leadership across diverse cultural contexts.

The center will serve three distinct stakeholders—students, community and corporations—with a passion for providing ideas, practical tools and ethical philosophies for developing sustainable organizations for creating both economic and social value. We are committed to achieving this through formal classroom learning, practitioner workshops, field research and rigorous academic research relevant to the science and practice of effective managing and leading. We are very particular about the fact that everything we do here at the center should enrich student experience at UT Dallas and is realized through community and corporate engagements.

I encourage you, students, community leaders and corporations, to further examine our Leadership Center and hope you will participate in our tradition of excellence here at The University of Texas at Dallas.

Hasan Pirkul, PhD
Dean and Caruth Chair of Management

We all know the critical importance of leadership at all levels and in all types of organizations, and we know the tragedy of failed leadership. We believe that leadership can be learned and a leader's effectiveness can be improved. We also believe that ethical leadership, based on sound values, is good leadership.
The University of Texas at Dallas, under the School of Management, has established the Leadership Center at UT Dallas. The university's vision is to bring the body of knowledge on leadership, combined with the actual experience of leaders, to students who aspire to be future leaders and to executives who wish to hone their leadership skills.

Jerry Hoag

Executive Director, The Leadership Center

Academic Director's Message

It is my pleasure to introduce you to The Leadership Center at UT Dallas. Our belief is that leaders have a responsibility for creating communities and institutions that are sustainable, and that sustainability in turn depends on ethical behavior.

At The Leadership Center, we help students, corporations, and others in our community to learn and practice sustainable, ethical leadership through classroom discussions and workshops to improve leadership skills. Another core activity is research and publication on issues relevant to scholars, students and practicing managers. We focus on effective problem framing and problem solving techniques, entrepreneurial leadership (both social and commercial), cross-cultural leadership, and sustainable business strategies.

I encourage you to take an active interest in the philosophy and practice of sustainable and ethical leadership and join us in our ongoing efforts to create a bold new world where what is good for corporations will be good for all people, irrespective of their position in society.

Jeffrey Hicks, PhD

Academic Director, The Leadership Center

The center has distinguished fellows and faculty who have a wide and deep skill set for ethical leadership teaching and training. Our fellows and faculty come from a variety of fields with the one thing in common: an urge to develop more ethical and learning leaders. Most of them are also experienced coaches to Fortune-100 executives.

Visiting Researchers

Organizations

The center has developed and successfully tested four offerings for organizations: leadership challenge, developing high performance teams, leading innovative organizations, and strategizing workshop. Each of these provides specific, measurable benefits to corporations. Depending on your organization’s needs, these can be one day or as long as two full days. In certain cases, pre-workshop research time may be needed by the center faculty to better assess your situation, which can be arranged if appropriate.

Leadership Challenge
The Leadership Challenge is a series of experiential case studies for executive management. Participants get a first-hand account of an actual crisis situation, develop and present their own actions plans, then hear the insider’s view of what really happened, directly from the leaders who lived and managed through it.

Developing High Performance Teams
Today’s fast-paced business needs the best performance from its teams. We help your business by engaging your managers in activities and learning that improve team building and management skills. Unlike other team training programs, we lay the foundation for training on tested organizational research.

Strategizing
C-level executives who desire a better understanding of strategic frameworks and how to apply the right ones to their group or organization will find SW most helpful. We do not believe in a one-size-fits-all approach, and will help you, with our experience, to select strategies for the most leverage and greatest results.

Community

We help local governments and not-for-profit organizations meet their challenges by facilitating strategy sessions, and providing student groups for solving tactical and operational issues.

CONFIDENTIAL

Individuals will not be identified and organizations will not be specified in our public papers/reports

The center has a bold research agenda that envelopes a wide range of what we believe are interrelated areas. The six areas we invest our resources into include business education quality; leadership and organization culture; technology strategy (these days, particularly nanotechnology); entrepreneurship; innovation and sustainability; and quantitative cultural studies.

Our corporate sponsors join the McDermott Foundation in providing support for The Leadership Center at UT Dallas.